3 Stages Of SHTF

A slippery slope – the collapse – and then lockdown. Consider this sequence while contemplating the big picture of societal collapse into SHTF, and how you would recognize it and prepare for it…

Slippery Slope

This begins with creeping normalcy and shifting baseline. Like the proverbial frog that won’t jump out of the pan as it is being slowly boiled, so too are many people unable to see and react to significant change that occurs gradually.

The problem is – a relatively small set of ‘first steps’ may lead to a chain reaction of related events culminating in some significant effect (SHTF), much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.

Collapse

The slippery slope effect could lead to an avalanche of boulders as the entire wall-face collapses to a pile of rubble. The collapse occurs suddenly.

Societies along with their life support systems suffer abrupt failures after a long term ‘slippery slope’ decline of it’s culture, it’s civil institutions and/or other major characteristics of it’s society.

Factors that may combine and contribute to collapse are economic, social and cultural, overpopulation, resource depletion, or major natural or man-made disaster including war or invasion.

During collapse, and for a time, power actually becomes decentralized and people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms with a slackening of social rules, although what’s left of society as a whole is suffering chaos. Geographically speaking, communities become more isolated.

Lock Down

Lockdown – a state of containment or a restriction of progression to prevent people or information from escaping. It is ordered by someone in command and implemented by force.

It is martial law or takeover imposed on an unstable population. It accompanies curfews, the suspension of civil law, and civil rights.

This final stage can be the most dangerous in that it will encompass a time of either total compliance or civil war, or a mixture of both.

Preparing for and surviving SHTF involves many varying methods, choices, and behavior. It may benefit you to consider each of these three stages and form a plan how to prepare and survive through each of them.

14 Comments

Really serious SHTF situations will probably happen suddenly and progress from bad to worse quickly. But most disasters man made or natural tend to either give some warning or offer a brief “golden hour” to do something to mitigate the negative effects. The trick is to recognize that you are in a SHTF situation early on and take some actions that will help you survive. Be aware so that you won’t be the last to know when disaster strikes. Have a plan A, B, C & D. Have plans for most likely scenarios. Practice/test your plans. Think through some of the worst case scenarios, what are your options? How does any of this impact your plans? If necessary modify your plan. A plan without any actions/practice and necessary equipment/supplies/stuff is wishful thinking and not a plan. Make a game of it; have a no electricity day or no water from the tap day. Decide to make bread from your stored wheat and cook it in a dutch oven over charcoal on your back patio (I’ve done this). Put on your bug out clothes and boots, grab your bug out pack and go for a walk/hike for 4-8 hours. Try getting through an entire week without going to the store or buying anything. Plan; test; adjust plans. Thanks to Obama and all the rest of our political elite I think SHTF is coming, don’t get caught unprepared.

Historical? Sure. SHTF has many forms – most familiar is the fall of the Roman Empire. There was lots of local bad stuff but the farther disconnected you are from the central point/power, the longer it took to make things turn bad. Suburbs of Rome fell in days, the farthest reaches, months even years.

Think of London during the Blitz – bombs landing everywhere, people sent their children to the country where they were less likely to be harmed, destruction and death were familiar. During the Siege of Leningrad, St. Petersburg, they had it worse. They were surrounded by the Germans for nearly 3 years. Little to no food in or out. Stories of cannibalism aren’t hard to find (do a little searching.) (From untrustable, but common, source, Wikipedia) –

“Civilians in the city suffered from extreme starvation, especially in the winter of 1941–1942. For example, from November 1941 to February 1942 the only food available to the citizen was 125 grams of bread, of which 50–60% consisted of sawdust and other inedible admixtures, and distributed through ration cards. For about two weeks at the beginning of January 1942, even this food was available only for workers and military personnel. In conditions of extreme temperatures (down to −30 °C (−22 °F)) and city transport being out of service, even a distance of a few kilometers to a food distributing kiosk created an insurmountable obstacle for many citizens. In January–February 1942, about 700–1,000[citation needed] citizens died every day, most of them from hunger. People often died on the streets, and citizens soon became accustomed to the sight of death.

Reports of cannibalism appeared in the winter of 1941–1942, after all birds, rats, and pets had been eaten by survivors.[54] Hungry gangs attacked and ate people.[55] Leningrad police even formed a special unit to combat cannibalism. This unit resulted in 260 Leningraders being found guilty of and put in prison for the crime of cannibalism.[56]”

I’d consider having to eat pets, rats and birds, the S hitting The Fan.

During Mao’s great cultural leap/progress, a man-made 2+ year failure in Chinese farms (actually just not enough food left for the farmers by the glorious proletariat…) caused between 15 and 50 MILLION deaths from starvation and malnutrition. There are written stories of old folk ceasing to eat so there would be enough for the younger ones. There are a few stories of in-family dead and living cannibalism…parents cooked and ate son, children killed and ate parents. I read one story where they described eating grass and tree leaves (any) because they were so hungry, even just dirt to keep their stomach from hurting. There was a running meme of “the dead are so many, the pets are eating the dead.” One of the witnesses rebuked this and said this was totally untrue – ‘the pets had already been eaten and were gone by now’ (paraphrased), e.g. it ain’t the pets eating the corpses. Of course this SHTF was caused BY the clamp down – I guess you can string many parts of SHTF together. But 15 to 50 million sounds SHTF to me!

During the aftermath in Hurricane Sandy, there were people who (felt) had to dig in garbage for meals for a while. Others stood in lines for many blocks just to get food and water. People who had regular jobs and houses and mortgages and…. that was their SHTF moment.

Thanks to you too!
You and GWTW both highlight the difference between SHTF and TEOTWAWKI. I prepare for what has actually happened before, mostly earthquake in my area, sometimes considering the idea of nuclear attack, or EMP, or zombie apocalypse makes my head spin.

It’s an expression. It’s happened several times in several different places around the world. Basically all hell breaks loose. See civil wars, ww1, ww2, Iraq happening now with the savages formerly known as ISIS. Etc….etc….

For a lot of people it happened in 1929 and lasted until after WW II. WW II was SHTF for a lot of people who fought the Germans and the Japanese and it was a disaster for people in Europe, Russia, the Phillipines and various South Pacific islands. It began for Jews in Europe in November 1938. Lenin killed 8 million Ukrainians in 1932 by taking their crops and forcing them to stay and starve.

In fact I worked with a Ukrainian immigrant in 1980 whose story was significant for preppers. His grandfather didn’t trust Russia and Lenin. They had a small land holding smaller then a couple of acres that they grew crops on to sell and to feed themselves. They would normally put their root crops in a root cellar outside the home and some grain and other produce in the house’s basement. Because of the military activity and recent bad events in other Russian territories he was afraid the army would take the families food. He dug pits deep in the forest and buried Beets and other root crops. It was his grandparents and two uncles and his mother living in the home. When the soldiers came in the fall of 1932 they took all the food and the oldest son. His mother was 8 years old in 1932 if she had been past puberty the army may have teken her as well. He said that many of his relatives died that winter from starvation and it also wiped out most people in the village. The soldiers guarded the roads so no one could leave. His grandfather would go into the forest at night and bring back a few beets and whatever small animals he could trap. They would cook and eat the food before sunrise and get rid of any scraps so that no one would know they had eaten. They ate one meal a day, mostly beets and turnips. He said they raised a large turnip that was normally cow feed but was quite edible for humans too. This man was born during WW II and lived in the same house with his parents and grandparents. They had to practice the same subtrafuge with their food during WW II because the government was confiscating food for the war effort. The stories handed down to him about these times was heart breaking. A true SHTF event.

Thanks.
Sometimes its tempting to think about things that ‘never-happened-but-what-if’
A little reminder about historical bad times (which many/most have never seen) puts a preparedness mindset in perspective.

I had a neighbor that walked across Europe evading the Germans. She was just 16, and went from farm to farm, asking for any food and sometimes was allowed to sleep in their barn, rarely in the house. Try getting some kid to do that today.

PapaJ,
“try getting some kid to do that today”….
it is a different world today, from then, even from forty yrs ago. and it is not all a choice of parents decisions. and not all a choice of the youth.

we are vastly regulated by “agencies”. I suppose they are motivated by good intentions, but then again, I am not always so sure about that. many agencies were established to help the truly abused/indigent, but to my mind they seem to have a powerful big trouble differentiating between those who truly need “their” help, and those who are “soft” targets. I keep hearing reports that many agency workers (child welfare, etc), get bonuses for many different types of activities (apprehensions/adoptions/ etc). No idea if this can be proven, but…

If parents today were “reported” to these agencies for “making” or “allowing” their kids / teens to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for survival as for example discussed by Papa J, someone would “report” them to the “agencies”..ya da ya da ya da.

It is my thought, that youth today are not challenged enough, in basic living skills, physical skills, survival in emergencies. I think this results in youth who are searching for “challenges” as it is natural with youth (whether it is human youth or animal youth) to want to challenge and find their limits and abilities. Youth today seldom have this opportunity.

It is my thought that this often results in youth getting into “stupid trouble” looking for ways to “stretch themselves”.

Here is a couple of recent examples of what I was trying to explain. Neither of these kids was stupid, or incompetent. Both parents knew where their kids were/kids knew where parent was/each knew how to reach the other. To my mind, both situations were reasonable. However, in each case, overwhelming overreach by agencies has resulted in stupidity.

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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – A Florida woman who let her 7-year-old son walk alone to a park has been charged with felony child neglect.

The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties group, received calls about the Florida incident from some who see it as an overreach by law enforcement. The group reached out to Gainey, who is now being represented by the organization’s attorneys.

Mother charged with a felony after her mother, Debra Harrell, left her alone to play at a nearby park while she worked at McDonald’s
She spent 17 days in jail, temporarily lost custody of her girl, thought she lost her job, and still faces 10 years in prison if convicted of felony child neglect.

Her child is not the only one at that park without a parent. There are children all over this neighborhood. They hold the feed-a-child program. There’s that splash pad too,” said Angelina Scott, who lives one street over from Harrell and has a daughter in the same grade as Regina.

Regina stayed at the McDonald’s each day at first, passing the summer hours with her mother’s laptop on the restaurant’s wireless connection. But it was stolen from their home in June, the second burglary in less than a year, according to Aiken County Sheriff’s Office reports.

Without the computer, she “sat there and was bored to death. She simply asked her mother if she could drop her off at the park rather than drop her off in a McDonald’s area all day,” Phillips said.

From the libertarian Reason Foundation, Harrell’s arrest is an example of how the government thinks it knows better how to raise a child than her mother. An opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times suggested it shows how society is predisposed, without evidence, to think black women are worse mothers.

@Papa J, and Anon; Your thoughts and discussion remind me of a book written by Robert A. Heinlein in the late 50s, called “Tunnel in the Sky”. The characters are juveniles, essentially high school students, that are “preparing” (hah) for travel to another planet for colonization. Their graduation exercise is like “Naked and Afraid”, in that they must stay on an unknown alien planet for 10 days and rendezvous at a rally point to be picked up. Being there, and alive is your graduation. The difference is that they get to take what ever equipment they want and can carry. It is a very good read and is one of my inspirations for not being dependent on others (in blind obedience, without thought of how that will happen) and willing to take responsibility for myself and my family. It was one of the Scribner’s publishing “Heinlein’s Juveniles” series of his books. I think most adults would like it as most of it is about surviving in a hostile, alien environment and how cooperation is the key to survival. A well written book that should be on everyone’s “survival reading list”. Be Well.

Back in WWII the army in the Phillipines had their version of bugging out that being going to Battan and waiting for the “Aid” to arrive from the US. They did not really recognize the folly of bugging out. Much of the food supply was not where it could be used. It had to be trucked to Battan but there were no trucks, no gasoline. and no time to do it. They were not really prepared at Battan where it counted. They did not have the mind set for SHTF even in the opening phases of WWII. They thought as civilians. 10,000 cases of canned goods owned by Japanese companies were available but the legal dept would not allow that so the food was left for the Japanese. Thousands of tons of rice was available but the law did not allow transport of rice from one province to another so the rice was left to the advancing Japanese. Our forces on Battan suffered from food shortages from the start because of poor planning and the wrong mind set in our military leadership. When SHTF comes laws leave if you are to survive that has to to be crystal clear. having resources all over the place is fatal as time and resources will not be available to gather them up in an emergency. SHTF will be a come as you are party

Nobody mentioned the Great Depression. While it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened in history, it was definitely a major hardship that was faced right here in the US. And I wonder, if it happened today, with the majority of the population not even knowing how to bake a loaf of bread, among the many, many other skills that the average person possessed back in the day. Heck, if all cell phones stopped working tomorrow, just think what a disaster most people would consider that simple event. How lost would people be? Literally, without their smartphone giving them directions, how many people don’t own a map, or would know how to read one. I would like Ken to post a list of skills that people knew back in the day, that the majority of the population don’t possess today. This might help preppers in an area they didn’t think of.

In regard to the Lock Down stage, that may come in an alternate form. If the old government ceases to exist altogether after the Collapse stage there will be, as stated, isolated communities. Initially in a state of anarchy, the seeds of law and order will begin to take root again regardless of the non-existence of the former government. Humans just don’t live without order as it is not in our nature. In most cases this is good, however, not always. A simple example of bad order being a local gang of thugs taking control of an area and forcing the inhabitants to live by their not so beneficial rules.

There will be numerous small groups looking to establish order as they see fit and many of those groups will have competing interests. As one group conquers and assimilates another group, and other groups merge together out of necessity, we can imagine there will be some significant conflict.

The emergence of the modern European nations from the remains of the fractured Roman Empire are an example of this. After that collapse, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little independent territories left to fend for themselves all across the European continent. Each one had developed it’s own guy in charge and his handful of fighters willing to maintain his form of order. Over time, these territories got bigger and bigger (at the expense of other independent territories) and nations formed.

So, what I’m getting at is rather than having a government operated lock down, we could see competing factions trying to seize control of resources and possibly trying to subjugate the local population.

Survival blog topics for a life of preparedness and risk awareness; emergency and disaster or threats thereof.

MSB

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